First let me apologise for the long article on ‘Why disbelief matters’. This started as a summary of the talk I gave at the EHA September meeting but each attempt to shorten it removed what appeared to be essential material. So a mere summary ended up as the complete talk.

Derek Hill went to great pains to stress that postmodernism was a far greater threat to humanist values than religion. To him, postmodernism was so conspicuously anti-enlightenment that it really must be a threat to rational enquiry and the scientific method so beloved of the secular humanist. However, for all its muddled philosophical deconstructionist gibberish and probably because of it, postmodernism fails to intrude on everyday life, fails to present any real danger to our democratic institutions, fails to undermine the great reservoir of Western thought and is rapidly failing to convince anybody. It also contributes little to social divisiveness anywhere and it has, so far, not caused any significant bloodshed.

On the other hand, religion scores in all these departments. Religious fundamentalists have long felt threatened by the secular world of the 21st century. Back in 1995, a study at an American university concluded: "the very force that once expected to render religion obsolete was in fact causing it to mutate and gather strength. That force is modernity, a mode of thinking that is exemplified by science. It focuses on change and progress, empirical evidence rather than ‘revealed’ truth, and scepticism of traditional (including religious) authority. The success of scientific explanations has replaced religious ones in many people’s minds." (See New Scientist 8 Oct 2005 p.41). Fundamentalists are not necessarily the disgruntled fringe of traditional religion, they are increasingly providing voice for main stream Jews, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and even Bhuddists. They are not merely on the defensive; they are militant activists. They are pressing their point at the highest level. The Vatican has some 50 lobbyists in Brussels pressing their absolutist views. Muslims in Ontario, Canada, came close to achieving the first intrusion of Sharia courts in a Western jurisdiction. Fortunately Canadian common sense prevailed and now Sharia courts will not be allowed and, furthermore, even the established Jewish and Christian tribunals will be banned. The matter probably won’t end there.

We in the Ealing Humanist Association have often been taken to task for being over-concerned about religion. This issue of the Bulletin is full of it. I make no apology and simply ask you to read it. Thereafter, we tentatively rest our case.

I am intrigued by the comedy and the tragedy of the human condition and, in learning to cope with this condition, how the human race has steeped itself in a wide variety of religious belief. For many, God is a very useful idea: it is certainly a very old one.

The concept of God was created at the dawn of time - as human consciousness began to emerge on to the unsuspecting cosmic scene. Step out into the desert all alone on a clear moonless night and one look at the night sky says it all. The effect is dazzling - the twinkling lights are at arms length uncannily looking at you and talking to you. While the world beneath our feet is all toil, hardship and tragedy, the world above is frightening in its detached majesty.

To my mind, that is one of the routes through which our distant ancestors came to believe in a cosmos populated by God(s) and spirits. No divine revelation, no holy books, the stars said it all to the primitive mind. That initial impact on the emerging human mind has never left us. We became, to use modern jargon, hard-wired to believe in the sky as the abode of the gods. Modern religion still possesses the vestiges of a sky, a heaven, filled with mysterious beings and continues to promote the idea of our fearsome world controlled by the occupants of a mysterious cosmos.

As a non-believer, I also am intrigued by the mystery of the cosmos. But I do not derive from this any form of religious faith. I do not believe in any god or any form of divine intervention or the efficacy of prayer. I do not believe in heaven, hell, miracles, angels or devils. I do not believe in witches & warlocks, magic, astrology, monsters, UFOs, wizards or the daVinci Code. I am close to being an old fashioned materialist, and yet, despite this and despite my scientific interests in physics, astronomy and medicine I enjoy a keen feeling for the mystery of the cosmos - and I have no wish to demystify it with quaint stories of heavenly gods etc.

Mystery is only an expression of the unknown - not of the unknowable. All those angels and demons of childhood vanished along with Santa Claus and Bogeymen when I was a mere child. Some of them served me well in childhood and some not at all well.

My long list of disbeliefs may sound very negative, but my intellectual approach to the traditional characteristics of religion is essentially positive. For a start, when I stop to consider the other side of the equation - the outrageous, assertive, positive, absolutist claims of religious story tellers, disbelief sounds to me like a refreshing form of positive thinking.

Objectively, most religious claims deserve, at first, to be disbelieved - for they are mostly quite outrageous. To the simple straight-forward modern human mind they simply don’t make sense and are better disbelieved. If one believes too easily, one is open to falling in love with the first belief system one encounters - like Titania falling in love with Bottom with the head of an ass. Children are a captive audience and, while they are natural disbelievers, they are also open and candid towards the authority of the teacher and will all too easily believe whatever quaint religious stories they are told. I think it is grossly unfair for anybody, teacher, parent or priest to impose any religious dogma on a child. The child has neither the freedom to disobey nor the critical faculty to distinguish between fact and fiction.

It is my view that to disbelieve - to endeavour to falsify - is the surest way of converging towards truth. You would probably say that comes from my scientific training where such methods are immensely rewarding. But, you may add, the methods of science should not be applied to religion. Perhaps so; should I instead appeal to theology? A famous theologian once declared that theology was the queen of the sciences - so I am back to science. Of course we know that theology is not science. It seems to be the role of any particular theology to hold firm views about one faith and to find all others more or less flawed. But, in any case I would say that, although the methods of science have limitations, there is no territory it cannot explore - it has no boundaries.

As we pass through the age of postmodernist thinking and recover some of the dignity of traditional enlightenment scholarship, there emerges a renewed acceptance that the scientific outlook can genuinely inform research into the humanities. The methods of science are fundamental to human thought and rationality - and it is a good intellectual exercise to apply them to all human experience: to love, beauty, emotion, art, spirituality, delusion and dreams - if only to explore the limitations of science.

As topics for debate there is no reason why one should not propose that, for example, Christ really did rise from the grave or Mohammed really did fly from Mecca to Jerusalem and thence to heaven and back on horseback (Burak), that the survival of a particular tsunami victim really was a divine miracle and other stories where historicity and fable intermingle. But the evidence is so sparse as to make the balance of probability weigh heavily against such propositions.

Believers must fall back on sacred books, revelations, pure faith and appeal to authority - which, from an outsider’s viewpoint sound like irrational cop-outs.

It is, however, a self evident truth that many religious people perform outstanding acts of care and support - for the elderly, the dying, the poor, the sick etc. Us secularists don’t do this as well as religious people but many of us actively participate in charitable activities. All the good work of religious or non-religious people is of profound value to society and, if religion brings about more of it, then I am happy to see some religion in society.

I accept this side of religion on purely pragmatic grounds because altruism needs to be encouraged in a society which is permeated with selfishness. By rejecting religion I voluntarily isolate myself from this source of comfort when it is needed.

I do get enormous pleasure from some of the traditions of religion - particularly liturgical music - and the great Masses of Beethoven and Mozart. However, religion is not all care and comfort and my main concerns about religion at this time in my life are its irrationality and its divisiveness. And of these, divisiveness is the most serious.

Regarding irrationality: It staggers me how often people are drawn into irrational superstitious belief systems. Archbishop Deya - the Kenyan miracle baby facilitator, Marshall Applewhite’s Heaven’s Gate - second coming - the Hale Bopp suicides: David Koresh’s Branch Davidians and the massacre at Waco: The Korean. Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church plus its 200 odd front organisations which have poured 100’s of millions into trying to replace American democracy with a Unification Theocracy: Rabbi Berg and his Kabala Centre - a monumental money raising scam. The surprising willingness of people to follow these cults leaves me amazed. Stupefying cult practices abound: the scandal of the Australian weeping virgins, the Church of Satan, the summer solstice Druids at Stonehenge, Witchcraft, Voodoo, Alien abductions … etc. People simply can’t get enough of it.

Why do human brains turn so easily towards such irrational practices? The answer is all too often to be found in the methods used by proselytisers. Religion of any sort is a strong method of controlling and influencing people. It is a source of great power at the point of delivery and can promote an abject slave-like worship at the point of reception. The beautiful independence of the human mind withers before a panoply of obsessive beliefs.

Regarding Divisiveness: Divisiveness is not the same as diversity. The former creates barriers, the latter dismantles them.

I think all of us in this room would nowadays agree that old style RI was harmful and divisive - it created barriers. RE has replaced it but RI is not by any means a thing of the past. It continues to happen in all parts of the world. When children are brought up within the confines of one particular faith community, they are generally taught that this faith, the faith of their parents, is absolutely right and, by implication, if not by overt proclamation, all others are wrong. This makes for petty self-righteous sectarianism, something I consider should be kept out of the classroom altogether.

Our new multicultural society presents us with a golden opportunity to replace divisiveness with diversity. The new Framework for RE is perhaps a step in the right direction and I trust the Ealing SACRE is making good progress in introducing the new format for their RE/ethics teaching - at least in state schools. A knowledge of ancient Greek religion with its quarrelling interaction between gods and humans is at least as important as a knowledge of the Mosaic religions. The contribution of Greek thought to modern culture is perhaps much more pertinent than the Christian concept of redemption through a painful crucifixion or the Islamic concept of the Koranic word of Allah or the Jewish concept of the chosen race - but all have their place in the fascinating history of the human race. Is it realistic to think that the term 'religious education' could eventually come to mean 'Practical ethics and the history of world religions'? I wish I could believe it.

Disbelief: My own disbelief in any religion is not a matter of indifference. It is positive thinking and takes its cue from such things as the appalling record of religious intolerance and divisiveness and the pragmatic value of behaving well towards all one’s neighbours - not just your own select group of believers. Of course, it is also strengthened by the total implausibility of the existence of any form of personal punishing God.

A recent survey has shown that some 65% of teenagers are, like myself, non-believers. Their view may be wiser than that of their religious forebears and is certainly more conducive to the growth of intelligence and emotional independence. Teachers should obviously not attempt to diminish their views with a holier than thou attitude. Perhaps by listening to them we may well learn a great deal about ourselves. We may also derive a refreshingly sideways glance at the moral prejudices of society.

In education, disbelief always matters, otherwise education is little more than rote learning. Teachers in the subject of religious education have a greater opportunity to explore human culture and ethics through the wonderfully independent minds of disbelieving teenagers than through the minds of those who have already become bound into a strong absolutist faith.

The new Framework for RE may not give any great importance to secular systems such as humanism but it does ask you to consider them. I think they deserve a far greater prominence because we certainly need to find ways of avoiding divisiveness and because old time religion has such a poor record in this respect.

Morality: Is morality supposed to be the exclusive property of religious believers? Of course not. But, we are often asked how morality can have any meaning for the non-believer?

Non-believers would agree that morality is taken very seriously by some religious people - but religion is certainly no sure path to morality. Missionary and proselytising zeal often display questionable moral principles. When we outsiders look at the history of religion, ancient and modern, we see it bespattered with acts of immorality - bloodshed, intolerance, insincerity, deviousness, hypocrisy, cruelty towards apostates or infidels, cruelty to women and children all going hand in hand with genuine expressions of faith, hope and charity. How confusing!

Morality cannot thrive in an atmosphere of religious intolerance - the ‘I am right, you are wrong’ form of absolutism is itself responsible for breeding immoral attitudes.

I personally rate morals and ethics very highly and do so on the basis of seeking what is best for human happiness and, more importantly, avoiding doing harm of any sort to anybody. Most of the non-religious people I know are moral human beings - at least as much and sometimes more so than their religious neighbours. Of course, unethical behaviour is not restricted to any group or any faith, it is often sadly present where we would least expect to find it.

I lived in Canada for many years and encountered in the 1950s and 60s a Quebec province of oppressive religious obsession in all phases of life from the nursery to the judiciary. But attitudes have evolved. That hitherto benighted Canadian province has now barred the teaching of Catholic and Protestant religions in schools and is introducing a syllabus of Ethics & Religious Cultures. That is good news to me but I will continue to watch that space.

Children are set on the road to religion not by legal consent - there is no such thing with children. They have no choice when they are steered from the innocent and beautiful phase of childhood into a world of dogma, theology, catechism, rote learning and intolerance - no matter how beautiful it may all appear to its confirmed adherents - notably Pope Benedict (13/08/05). Children are still manipulated into an uncritical reverence for the icons of their father’s faith - saints, holy books, beads, bleeding images of suffering bodies , imams, popes and priests and they develop an unhealthy absolutism in their delicate ill-formed thought processes.

I think adults are sometimes rather over zealous in their use of the educational device to boost adherents to their faith. The same device was used, in extremum, in the 1930s when, as we know, those poor little 13 year old Hitler Youth revered their master. By this means children can be blinkered into any straight and narrow path of absolute belief that sees toleration as weakness.

Fortunately, children are resilient and intelligent as well as fragile and vulnerable and many who are taught in this way do happily apostatise. But others don’t - and a large part of the youth of either group are deprived of that most precious gift - to be able to think freely when young and eventually to select one’s own route to the ‘consolation of philosophy’.

Traditionally, religious people have often taken the view that the moral system they espouse is ultimately an expression of the mind of God. Different religious traditions give rise to different systems of morality each claimed by their adherents to be the mind of God. But to go one step further, religious people often express the view that a person cannot be moral without a belief in God - their God.

Hence morality, when strongly derived from religious tradition, can become a sure route to divisiveness and it thus borders on the immoral.

I would suggest that morality has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. It is entirely a human affair. To quote Richard Holloway (Once Bishop of Edinburgh and Gresham Professor of Divinity): “Morality tries to base itself on observed consequences, not on beliefs, superstitions and preferences. A wrong act is one which manifestly harms others or their interests, or violates their rights, or causes injustice”. Thus a good legal system designed to protect peoples’ rights incorporates and expresses a great deal of the moral structure of our society - it distils the essential moral code from our confusing cultural history.

Tolerance: Modern civilisation demands tolerance. Tolerance is an awkward, two-edged word. While its immediate intent is to promote cooperative understanding it also has a long association with endurance, sufferance and even an air of patronizing. To tolerate somebody else’s belief is often meant to endure the stupidity of it. We do want to be tolerant of differences of opinion and yet, at the same time, we want to be intolerant of stupidity.

How do we do that?

I often find it hard to tolerate what I view to be the irrational beliefs of others and yet I prefer to show them as much courtesy as I do those not so inclined. This form of ‘moral courtesy’ has been absent in the history of most religions and it is singularly absent in our brash media-driven society. It continues to be completely absent in the words uttered from many pulpits all over the world. Moral courtesy is strongly promoted by clear thinking citizens who respect the rights of others - regardless of their own religious persuasion or lack of it.

Some thoughts on sin and morality: I may not agree with people who think pork is so unclean that it is wrong to eat it, but I am prepared to be respectful to their wishes. There is nothing intrinsically immoral about eating pork but, in certain faiths, it is considered a sin. So we have to distinguish between sinful acts and ones which are intrinsically immoral. Traditional religions put enormous stress on the concept of sin - as an offence against God which deserves severe punishment and the possibility of hell-fire after death. What an extraordinarily powerful tool this has been throughout history. Fear of God’s wrath may be a powerful means for religious control but it is no way at all for bringing about a true appreciation of moral behaviour.

Sin may be the business of priests but morality is the business of society - the laws of good citizenship, the civil laws and the intangible laws of courtesy and good behaviour. Fortunately, most people today do not believe in eternal punishment for their misdemeanours - which means traditional religion-based systems of morality don’t work as well as they used to when people readily bowed their heads to the absolutist beliefs expressed by priestly authority - when coercion won the day.

Morality as a purely human endeavour has slowly disentangling itself from the plethora of superstition that has gone hand-in-hand with religious belief in all civilisations. God is irrelevant to this very successful transition but many people find it just too hard to accept such a notion.

Children, with their fresh unsullied minds, are remarkably perceptive in understanding what many adults find so difficult to accept. Morality is a wonderful subject to discuss with children: themselves a mixture of little ‘angels’ and uncooperative vagabonds.

Voluntary consensual systems of morality require, in general, no coercion. Extreme immorality, extreme discourtesy brings one before the beak!

Is there still a place for respecting authority? If authority is too powerful it has a tendency to oppress people and frustrate creative diversity. So when must we respect authority? We have a moral obligation to respect all others, their views, their rights, and their idiosyncrasies - but, to put the boot on the other foot, that respect has to be earned by those in authority and by everybody else. Criminal drug dealers, fanatic preachers, fanatic animal righters or corrupt politicians do not earn that respect when they themselves indulge in immoral behaviour.

Empirically, our moral obligations extend to the whole of the biosphere. It is necessary for survival that we respect our environment, its ecological balance, its fragility - civilizations have been wiped out by the wrong irrigation methods (e.g. Sumerians) and by religious mania, fanaticism or obsession (e.g. Easter Island). But Ronald Reagan expressed an age-old religious view when he said, “there’s no need to deal with environmental problems - for it is not long before the Lord comes.” Ah well !

A guiding environmental moral principle that all children easily identify with is, “We need the earth more than the earth needs us”. Moral wisdom is learned early and easily if life is happy. It can die a death if life is lived in a climate of poverty, anarchy, unprincipled authority or disenfranchisement.

Thus the authority we most respect is the authority which genuinely attempts to reduce poverty, establish and maintain a sound system of law, has high ethical standards and respects the rights of all its citizens. Long may we seek it!

Disbelief is a most positive tool in the search for truth. One can only test the value of a hypothesis by challenging it with disbelief - a principle used all the time in science - the principle of falsification. Religion stands or falls on the veracity of divine revelation - but there is little appeal to reason to say, ‘I believe in God because God revealed that I must’. To declare that revealed religion is so special that the principle of falsifiability does not apply - religion is unfalsifiable - has little appeal to the mind that is skilled in the art of disbelief.

Older societies benefited from the social harmony that a common religious belief generated but often came into cruel conflict when interfered with by other belief systems. Why does violence so often occur when Protestants march near Catholic communities in Belfast? There may be strong political influences but the two versions of Christianity, Catholicism and Protestantism, have long been fuelled by divisive religious education. Despite the many signs of reconciliation, that is a difficult past to put right.

Modern multicultural societies are thankfully learning to live in harmony despite having no common belief system. It will take at least the next generation to tell us how we might do it! Perhaps society will acquire a new found harmony from a common disbelief - the concept of shared common moral values distilled from a wide variety of cultural traditions and totally devoid of a personal, punishing God.

Don’t think of a disbeliever as a disabled person in dire need of spiritual renewal. Most of us are self-converted from standard belief systems. All of us, you and me, started life as indifferent to belief. Our education at home, at school, in churches, mosques, temples and synagogues made sure we acquired the trappings of the religion we were accidentally surrounded by as infants. Us disbelievers are (mostly) apostates - a punishable offence in some religions and highly frowned upon by most - but, fortunately, totally acceptable in our free democratic society. Our freedom to believe is meaningless unless we also have freedom to disbelieve.

Children’s minds are so precious. They are the beautiful minds not yet polluted with the grown-up rubbish of a world driven by media trivia and corporate greed. But they have to become a part of that world - despite the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. Their young minds are hungry for knowledge and they rely on their teachers to guide them through the four Rs (Reading, writing, ‘rithmatic and wroughting) and thence into an understanding of the world of scientific enquiry and the humanities. Without any appeal to religious belief, good teachers will guide them into an appreciation of sound principles of morality. In all of these endeavours, the acquisition of wisdom and the growth of intelligence are promoted through encouraging and refining the critical faculty (teachers beware!). Young minds are inspired by the ability and willingness to disbelieve.

Anthony Constable

(Previously addressed to Ealing SACRE on 12th Sep 2005)

It has been widely reported that George Bush went into Iraq because God told him to go! But this is not the only occasion when Bush has been led to do something by direct intervention from God. Julian Borger (Guardian 07/10/05) tells us that George Bush believes he became President because, “God wants me to do it”. Bush believes that he is a man on “a mission from God”, that “God speaks through him” and that, “This call of history has come to the right country. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity”. With this sort of guidance from the top, it is only natural that he is surrounded by like thinking sycophants. When US General William Boykin told Christian groups in 2003 that the war on terror was a war on satan, he was not admonished - he was promoted to deputy under-secretary of defence for intelligence. Intelligence!?

Dear Editor,

Your published report of the last Coffee Morning was accurate, I'm sure we'd all agree; except however in saying that others, than me, were wisely differing over Darwin having been a "mere figment of the imagination". Wisdom would have been displayed if, as I think they did, the others had followed the argument that it was God who was a "mere figment of the imagination". Darwin, though without the 'mere', was a figment of the imagination too, since we humans have images, even word-images, of everything we are aware of – factual as well as fictional – in our cerebral cortex, as I'm sure you'd agree.

On a rather less serious note, I appreciated the wealth of detail you gave on alternative methods that have been used in giving the date. Am I right that I at least may safely go ahead writing jan, feb, etc sandwiched between numerals as suggested? But it does not end there! Can we not also quote the days of the week also in literal fashion, sandwiched between numerals? Thus the Coffee Morning in question above becomes 34sat10.30 where the first component is the week number. Year is in fact usually superfluous when we are including fractions of a day, and of the hours as well. The advantage of avoiding the double insertion of variable forms of punctuation still applies, I suggest.

Yours sincerely,

Raymond Carlisle

Editor’s reply:

In relation to Darwin; I was less worried by your use of ‘mere’ than that of ‘figment’. Whereas figment could be used to mean 'image' (now an obsolete use), it is more commonly used to mean 'A product of fictional invention' and even 'a fraudulent device' (OED) which is why I disagreed. But my apologies knowing now that you simply meant an 'image'.

Regarding dates; it is very difficult to invent a new date or time convention, as the French discovered with their attempt to decimalise the clock and their two attempts to use a ‘Revolutionary Calendar of Reason’. Both failed miserably. And the well designed ‘World Calendar’ has also not caught on. Week number is frequently used by management gurus who like to set ‘targets’ by such a system. But week number is redundant in our usual date system which uniquely specifies a day by date and month. The date and time referred to was 10.30 Saturday 10th September 2005. Yes, that is overly long but it really fits into our well-honed mental imagery. Your suggestion that this should be abbreviated to 34sat10.30 is neat but you would have to work hard to change our cherished tradition which has its roots in the calendar of Julius Caesar and Sosigenes back in 45 BCE … and which still coexists with numerous other (mostly religious) calendrical devices.

Anthony Constable

There is a strong impression out there that fundamentalist Christianity and Islam present some sort of a threat to science. This is quite wrong. If anything is to suffer from this strange wave of retrograde unreason it certainly won’t be science. People may suffer, our educational programmes may become even worse than they are now, the refined legal system of modern democratic countries may be damaged severely and, of course, the very fabric of democracy may suffer. Scientific research may become heavily constrained and scientific education may take a few knocks but the body of knowledge we call science will be unaffected and no scientific laws will be altered. Religious fundamentalism will never make Newton’s gravitational theory or Darwin’s theory of evolution dance to the tune of divine revelation.

The belief that Christ ascended bodily into the stratosphere may be hard to swallow by anybody knowing about the basic concept of a gravitational field. If, as a result of a religious education, this strange belief is held by a person who then becomes a practising scientist there need be no conflict. The physical reality encapsulated by the laws of gravity are no hindrance to those wishing to believe in religious miracles. Religion is thought by most people to belong to an altogether different body of knowledge from the mundane laws of physics - and the two do not intersect. The one is achieved by hard reasoning, experiment and the vetting of falsification while the other is acquired by faith in divine revelation.

Religious fundamentalism is bursting with energy in many countries, particularly those where theocracies are well established. Africa and the USA are of great concern, the first because fundamentalism interferes with progress towards democratic government, good education and a sound legal system, the second likewise.

But the state of knowing we call science has two characteristics that ensure its survival. One is its aim to satisfy the basic human demand for rational explanation. The other is that it generates models that are flexible enough to be modified yet rigid enough to allow accurate prediction.

Religious fundamentalists may welcome the ‘last day’ and their hoped for resurrection to power and glory. Short of that fictional scenario, science has nothing to fear from the passing fashion of the backward looking anti-intellectual reliance on revelation.

Anthony Constable